Starring Mads Mikkelsen and Annika Wedderkopp. In Danish with English subtitles. Rated 18A.

This elegant, sometimes hard to watch movie is a return to form for writer-director Thomas Vinterberg, who helped kick off the neo-Scandi revolution called Dogme 95 with 1998’s The Celebration and has struggled to find his footing ever since.

Working with cowriter Tobias Lindholm, the Danish filmmaker has fashioned The Hunt into a perfect vehicle for Mads Mikkelsen, his country’s top actor. Mikkelsen has played Vikings and villains, and he is the new Hannibal Lecter in the Canadian-shot NBC series Hannibal. But he’s best as a complicated hero, and he is phenomenal here as a small-town teacher who does everything right but gets ruined by an almost accidental lie.

Since the local middle school closed, Mikkelsen’s good-hearted Lucas has been working at a small kindergar­ten—the only male on staff, and the most popular person there. Having grown up in a rural community where he still goes hunting and drinking with his childhood pals, his machismo seems just a little more studied than theirs. He’s divorced and battling for custody of his teenage son (Lasse Fogelstrøm) when there’s trouble at work.

Sorely neglected by her quarrelsome parents, five-year-old Klara (wonderful Annika Wedderkopp) develops a crush on the teacher, who is also the best friend of her hard-drinking father (Thomas Bo Larsen). When Lucas gently distances himself from the girl, she conflates the perceived rejection with some porn her bonehead brother allowed her to see and makes up a small story to get him in trouble.

It works too well, and the seemingly kind principal (Susse Wold) quickly fans a dim accusation into a village-wide catastrophe. That an entire community can instantly betray one of its most respected members also hints at the blind allegiance that fuels fascism, whether religious or political. That the ostracized victim still wants back in is, well, only human.